


Those Who Listen (and Those Who Hear)

by Star_Going_Supernova



Series: all creatures big and small [2]
Category: Godzilla: King of The Monsters (2019), Kong: Skull Island (2017)
Genre: Angst, Discussions of grief, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Meetings, Fluff, Gen, Implants, Monster-Human Friendship, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Godzilla: King of The Monsters (2019), Post-Kong: Skull Island (2017), Skull Island, those are for chapter 1
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:21:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26454055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Going_Supernova/pseuds/Star_Going_Supernova
Summary: Two very different conversations with two very different Titans.(And a little bit of danger, but who's counting?)
Relationships: Kong (Legendary | MonsterVerse) & Madison Russell
Series: all creatures big and small [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1923007
Comments: 14
Kudos: 81





	Those Who Listen (and Those Who Hear)

**Author's Note:**

> I was trying to come up with a snappy word for Kong, along the lines of Dadzilla, Momthra, and Brodan. All my stupid brain gave me was Kongcle, like Kong uncle, and I’m still helplessly laughing about it. 
> 
> This was a request from MarvelKid22! Hope y’all enjoy!

Maddie stared out the window of the helicopter, lost in thought. Before her departure from Castle Bravo, her dad had been acting weird, and it was still bothering her hours later.

He’d been distracted by something. Something important enough that when she’d walked up to him as casually as she could, and mentioned as off-handedly as she could, that, oh, there was a research team heading to an outpost later, and they were hoping someone with an implant could join them, and, wow, look at that, I’m not busy right now—he’d just nodded and mm-hm’ed.

The kicker was when she slid the base’s location in there and he hadn’t even _flinched,_ much less reacted the way she had initially expected. Which involved phrases like _over my dead body_ and _hell no!_ and plenty of decisive gesturing.

But her dad had only nodded again and said, “You have fun, and be safe, kiddo.”

She’d left before her words could catch up to him and make him change his mind. Or really, before he came to his senses.

It was too late now, though, and Maddie spared a second to wonder if he had realized what he’d agreed to yet. Probably not, considering she was pretty sure he would’ve found a way to get hold of her.

Which meant he was probably still distracted by whatever it was eating him up inside. He hadn’t looked upset or anything, thank goodness, but _something_ was clearly bothering him. She hoped her dad found a solution or peace of mind or an answer, whatever it was he needed.

In the meantime, the helicopter had finally landed and the research team was beginning to unload. Maddie put thoughts of her dad out of her mind for the time being, because she had admittedly more important things to pay attention to—mainly that she was now standing on Skull Island, arguably one of the most dangerous places in the world.

Her dad was going to _kill_ her when he found out.

• • •

Maddie wasn’t even slightly surprised when something went wrong. In fact, she would’ve been surprised if the whole trip went smoothly.

The plan had been to see if her implants would work in any capacity on the other inhabitants of the island. Animals in general were a no-go, but with the low-level radiation the island itself exuded, they were curious to see if these ones were just different enough to count.

Across their various encounters, she’d heard a reoccurring faint hum but never any words, so while these creatures got more of a reaction out of the translation software than, say, a common cat or dog, exposure to radiation simply wasn’t enough to have some form of Titan-speech.

No one had been particularly disappointed with the results, since it’d been a long shot anyway, and Maddie at least was pleasantly satisfied at getting to see one of those funky buffalo. Right as they’d been packing up to get a move on to their true destination, a high-pitched whine, like when a microphone got too close to a speaker, painfully erupted through Maddie’s implants.

She’d yelped, instinctively raising her hands to her ears, and that was about when a Skullcrawler descended upon them.

With the untranslatable shriek blasting right into the forefront of her mind, Maddie was understandably disoriented over the next few minutes. Someone had pulled her into one of the trucks, which had taken off down the _very_ bumpy dirt path they’d been following.

By the time Maddie managed to fumble the devices’ stupidly tiny switches to _off_ , either the truck hit something or something hit the truck, because she was absolutely certain they went airborne for a few seconds before landing with a horrible jerk forward and starting to roll.

Everything after that was an unknown, because the door beside Maddie had popped off and, in the commotion, she hadn’t put her seatbelt on. She found herself on the ground with a pained grunt, but there was still air in her lungs, so she hadn’t fallen far.

Her ears were ringing for a little while after that, so she remained motionless until her vision and hearing sorted themselves out. Nothing had eaten her yet, so she was probably safe-ish for now.

Maddie sat up with a groan. The grass and dirt around her was ripped up. There was no sign of the truck, or the Skullcrawler. Or the dirt path. Joy.

After a moment’s thought, she switched her implants back on. It hadn’t been much of an advanced warning, but the whine had definitely started before anyone had spotted the Skullcrawler, so with any luck, it would give her enough time to hide if another came along.

It was after she’d stood back up—without getting dizzy, thank goodness—that Maddie was presented with a dilemma: which way she should go.

Problem was, she had no way of being entirely sure the Skullcrawler had followed their truck. Going back might lead her to the road, or some of the other team members, or a creature totally ready to eat her. If she tried to follow the path of the truck she’d fallen out of, she might find nothing, because they’d kept going, or she might find dead people. Or a creature totally ready to eat her.

Maddie didn’t particularly like either of those odds, so she started walking in a direction that was neither forward nor back. The silence was eerie. There were no rumbling engines, no voices, no crunching of metal. Was silence a good thing?

To keep her mind from wandering in really unpleasant directions, she tried to decide if this ranked as a worse experience than Boston. The answer was no, in the end, but it was a close call.

As awful as this guessing game was, there was a very particular emotion attached to the action of deliberately drawing an angry five-hundred-foot-tall Titan right to you, and at least here, there were no burning buildings or flying bits of rubble or—well, no, there were tumbling cars here, apparently.

Still. Running through crumbling Boston was worse than walking through a field of grass on a pleasant day.

Her implants stayed reassuringly quiet as she went. The rest of her surroundings also stayed quiet, though this was less reassuring and more anticipation-building.

The scenery was just normal enough for Maddie to almost forget she was on Skull Island, and then she reached the top of a ridge and was forcibly reminded. Below her was a valley shrouded in pale smoke and littered with bones bigger than she was. Right in the middle were a pair of massive skeletons.

She stopped. It didn’t quite seem polite to continue in this direction. Though she was only able to guess about who they might’ve been, she wouldn’t appreciate it if someone went stomping around _her_ parents’ graves.

It was as she was contemplating her next move that she heard the footsteps. Maddie turned around to see Kong, the king of Skull Island himself, lumbering into view near one of the forest-y areas. It became clear as he got a little closer that he was talking to himself. And although she couldn’t quite pick up the words, there was a definite tone of irritation in his voice.

Maddie couldn’t help it—she laughed aloud at the idea of a Titan grumbling to himself under his breath.

Kong turned her way and spotted her immediately. He huffed through his nose as he switched directions to walk toward her. The sound was similar to Godzilla’s huffs—except Godzilla’s came from his mouth more than his nose—though she doubted he’d like that comparison. Which made her remember that, one, she hadn’t told Godzilla she was coming here, and two, that he would probably be just as unhappy when he found out as her dad would be.

Something to look forward to. 

The implants caught Kong’s words as he grew closer. “Little human. Lost human?” Maddie wondered if he was purposefully moving slowly and non-threateningly, or if it was just how he always was with anything that wasn’t a Skullcrawler or helicopter. “You are far from safety, little human.”

“I know,” she said, because answering Titans who didn’t expect her to be able to understand them was one of her favorite things in the whole world. “I don’t suppose you could point me in the direction of other humans?”

Kong physically startled back a little, and he made a funny noise that was partly a sharp intake of air and partly a huffy grunt. He crouched down, which was bizarrely human-like, compared to the way most Titans moved.

“Little human?” he said a little more hesitantly. “Understand me?”

“Yeah,” Maddie said, stepping further away from the valley gravesite. “I understand you. We—humans, I mean—made a device so we could hear Titans.” She gestured at her head, making sure to keep the explanation simple.

He reached down, more than slow enough for her to move away from him, and oh-so-gently brushed the tip of his finger against the side of her head. “Hear and listen?” he asked.

“Yep. Hear and listen,” she repeated. Every Titan she’d ever spoken to so far had asked something along those lines. Not just hearing, but _listening_. She was pretty sure ‘listening’ meant something slightly different to them. It was important somehow, and they seemed to take it very seriously when she said that she did.

Kong nodded slowly and let his hand rest on the ground. “You are lost?” he asked.

“Yeah, our group was attacked by a Skullcrawler. I don’t know where the path or anyone else is, so I was just kinda wandering around, hoping to find something.”

He grunted at the mention of a Skullcrawler. “Dangerous out here. I will take you to the humans.”

Maddie brightened up. “I’d really appreciate that, thanks!”

“Can carry?” he offered, flipping his hand so his palm was facing up. “Faster, easier. Won’t hurt little human.”

She was already heading towards his hand by the time he finished speaking. “I know you won’t,” she said. With the exception of Ghidorah, she’d found that Titans in general were retaliation-minded. You hurt them, they hurt you—or at the very least, they don’t bother going out of their way to avoid hurting you.

It was part of their Laws. Mothra had explained some of it to her once. It had a faint air of a “with great power” mindset. They knew they were enormous compared to the vast majority of life on the planet, human or otherwise, so they did their best to be careful. Their best, especially during battles, meant cities were still sometimes leveled, and people were often caught in the crossfire—which she thought was perfectly understandable.

It’d be like if she tried to maneuver through a city solely comprised of waist-high houses of cards. Of course she’d knock a bunch over. And when it came down to a choice between someone like Ghidorah having free rein of the entire planet verses burning Boston to a crisp, Maddie knew which one she’d choose any day.

But with a single human who wasn’t the slightest bit aggressive? Gentle giants had never been a more applicable phrase.

Maddie sat in Kong’s palm without fear of being crushed or dropped. He stood carefully, and she noticed him watching her.

“You have no fear,” he said, almost like a question.

She shrugged. “I have nothing _to_ fear.” And then, both curious about whether he’d understand the phrase, and hoping it wouldn’t upset him, she introduced herself the same as she always did these days. “My name’s Maddie, by the way. I’m the King’s Pup.”

To her relief, Kong paused for only a moment before making a grunting-chuckle noise. “Lizard has good Pup. Not so little human, then. Little _Titan_.”

It wasn’t the worst nickname she’d been given. No, Methuselah held that honor, though Scylla had nearly beaten him out before her nickname had grown on Maddie.

“News travels fast,” she muttered as he began to walk, skirting around the edge of the noxious-looking graveyard. Maddie didn’t even realize she was staring at the skeletons until Kong changed directions, blocking her view. She rubbed her arm and glanced up to find him looking down at her.

“We go around,” he told her. “Avoid death-smell.”

Maddie nodded and pulled her knees up to her chest. “I don’t like going in cemeteries either.” She smiled grimly and added, “Not so much because of a smell. I just don’t like the reminder.”

Kong was silent for a few steps. “Little Titan lost someone?”

“Yeah. Two someones. My mom and my brother.”

He huffed through his nose. “Sorry for Little Titan. Death is hungry.” He pounded his chest with his free hand. “Death hurts us all. Here. Lonely pain, empty pain.”

She nodded again. “Yeah. It’s like, you turn to say something to them because you forget for a second that they’re gone. But there’s just an empty space behind you, and then it hurts all over again, like the pain is fresh and new.”

Grief was a sensitive topic in at home, which wasn’t helped by how differently she and her dad processed it. It meant she didn’t often talk about it much with him, not in detail.

Telling her dad she was having a bad day because she particularly missed Andrew was one thing. Explaining that she’d seen the newly released final installment of Andrew’s favorite book series, and had briefly been blindsided by painfully instinctual thoughts like _I could surprise him with it_ and _I should ask him what’s happened in the past few books_ that her knees had nearly given out beneath her, was an entirely different thing.

Her dad’s ghosts haunted him in very different ways than hers did. And they coped in very different ways too. There was nothing wrong with that, though it did mean she bottled up more than she would have liked to. It was nice, now, to be able to release some of it.

Kong glanced back at the graveyard and said, “The pain is deep. It follows. You wonder, who would they be?”

“And you think about what they would say or do. How would they react to this or that. What would their laugh be like. The worst is when you remember something about them and realize you’ll never see them do that again.” Maddie took a deep breath. “But… I don’t mind hurting sometimes. I’m so afraid that if I _stop,_ it means I—I’ve gotten used to them being gone. Like I’ve moved on and it doesn’t affect me anymore that they’re not around.”

“No, Little Titan.” Kong came to a full stop to focus down on her. He raised his other hand and gently poked at her chest. “Healing is not forgetting. The lost ones, they would not want us to hurt. They would not want to hurt us.”

“But—”

“No,” he repeated, grunting. “You love them. They love you. You want them to hurt?”

She shook her head.

“See, yes? Hurt when you need to. Hurt fades. Stop when it’s done, and don’t be angry. They are gone. We are not. Foolish to die for the dead.”

Foolish to die for the dead. It brought her mom to mind against her will, and the hold Andrew had unintentionally had over her after he died. She didn’t want to be like that, so consumed by loss that it changed her for the worse.

“I’d want them to be happy, if I was the one who’d died,” she said, more to herself than to Kong. “And knowing them, they’d want me to be happy too.”

“Good,” Kong grunted as he started walking again. “Smart Little Titan.”

She smiled. “Thanks. It… feels good. To talk about this with, y’know…” She shrugged half-heartedly and glanced away over the fields and trees and swamps. “Someone who gets it.”

“Someone who gets it,” Kong repeated slowly. “Yes. We share, we understand. Not all can.”

Maddie nodded and pulled one of her knees to her chest so she could rest her chin on it. “Yeah. Grief is weird, but… it helps to share it,” she muttered. She let the silence linger for a few of his heavy steps before she looked up at him again. “Will you tell me a story, Kong? About your home?”

He grunted, but it was light and laughing. “A story for Little Titan. You will listen?”

There it was again. They never said _listen_ like it only meant hearing them. The weight behind it, though, was familiar enough for her to nod seriously and answer, “Always.”

**Author's Note:**

> I tried my best to give Kong a distinctly different voice from Godzilla and Rodan. He’s more serious, I think, and I had him use shorter, to-the-point sentences. I really hope it worked well.
> 
> Hope y'all are doing well! I'm working on kicking this writer's block into the stratosphere!
> 
> • [my tumblr](https://star-going-supernova.tumblr.com) •


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